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Violinists Olympic skiing adventure may have been a fiddle

David Charter

July 12 2014, 1:01am, The Times

The violinist Vanessa-Mae cut an unlikely figure competing at the Winter Olympics against the world’s top downhill skiers and finished a distant last.

It turns out that her place among the world’s elite may have been a fiddle. Four Slovenian ski officials were suspended yesterday for four years for allegedly rigging the results of qualifying trials to help her take part in the Sochi games.

To gain the ranking points necessary the violinist, 35, who competed for Thailand under her father’s surname of Vanakorn, had to compete in official races in Sweden, Norway, Slovenia and Switzerland.

The Slovenian Ski Association said that it had found evidence indicating that the races it hosted in January were “fixed at the behest of Thai ski officials to meet…